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I happened to be sorting through a few things a day or two ago, when I found a program from my high school graduation. It's that season now and one of those montages of the year's college commencement speakers was on the national news last night. [Best Line: from Michael Keaton - (straightening himself up to say something very serious) I want to leave you with two words... I'm Batman.]
Not too surprisingly the anniversaries of all my graduations fall within the next week. Umpty years ago today I graduated from college. Four years earlier than that, from tomorrow, I graduated from high school. Four years after college I got my graduate degree, the calendar date a few days from now.
There were 600+ graduates on my high school class, not huge by the standards of bigger cities, but if I remember correctly the second largest high school class in the St. Louis area that year. I had to look in the yearbook to remind myself what color robes we wore. My brother and sister who'd graduated from the same high school had worn traditional black. Times had changed and my class wore gold robes. Our tassels were the school colors, conveniently black and gold.
The first picture of graduation in the yearbook showed the two lines marching into the stadium to be seated. Side by side at the front were Nancy and Gary, both tall and good looking. Nancy was an old friend. We'd been in the same first grade class. The school district had grown so fast that there were 8 times as many graduates in my year as there had been of first graders in my year. Nancy lived not far from me. We were in the safety patrol together on the same school bus route. I didn't see much of Nancy once we started to junior high and didn't ride the same bus to school any more. Gary was a much more recent friend. We shared some interests, belonged to some of the same high school clubs. Gary didn't know it then, but he and I had dated the same girl at different times. Gary had something extra on his robes, a heavy black cord that went behind his neck and tassel ends that dangled down the front. He was in the Nation Honor Society.
I remember that the invited speaker was some businessman, who might as well have been chosen at random for all I knew of him. The three students who spoke were Ray, Janet and Mike. Ray was the class president, he didn't wear a black cord. I really never had any personal dealing with Ray, our class was that big. I guess Ray was a decent enough guy; never heard anything bad about him; but I'm positive he got a lot more votes for class president from the bottom half of the class than he did from the top half. He didn't give a speech, just alternated with the principal as master of ceremonies. We didn't have a class valedictorian. We were all invited to volunteer and submit speeches. I sure didn't volunteer! Janet and Mike were the two chosen. Janet did wear the cord of honor. I didn't know her very well. We were never in the same class together. In fact at a distance I'd always had the opinion she was rather stuffy and full of herself. The one time we did talk face to face, I was surprised to discover she was just a nice person I hadn't been fair with in my own mind. High school kids! ... What are you going to do? ... Janet gave a pretty typical graduation speech, looking to the future and blah, blah. Don't get wrong me, a good speech, but who remembers that stuff?
Mike and I knew each other better. He and I were sitting in the same classroom about a month and a half-earlier waiting for our second period class to begin. I was sitting there since the start of the day, since my first class, Journalism, was in the same room. We knew they were tapping people for the Nation Honor Society that morning. My Journalism teacher was still sitting there with a camera in her lap as the second period was about to start. She said aloud to no one in particular, "I'm just waiting to know where to go." I don't know if she was fooling anyone. I certainly knew she was already where she wanted to be. Three kids from the honor society showed up at the door. So we knew three people in class were going to be tapped. I put two and two together. Mike was also a student of the journalism teacher and was working on the school yearbook that year. That term I was working on the school newspaper, in fact I was designated the front page editor for the next issue. It made sense, Mike was really bright, principal liked him a lot. Mike would be on the front page of the newspaper. All the names of the senior class inductees were being read. The first two names from our classroom were heard and duly honored with a symbol of the school a gold, pinned-on, construction-paper torch with the letters NHS. The names continued to be read and suddenly Mike turned to me and said, "It's going to be you." I said with absolute certainty, "No, it's going to be you!" We went back and forth a couple times and then a last name past his in alphabetical order came over the intercom. I half-way gasped, "It's me." And the picture both appeared on the front page and in the yearbook.
So Mike who deserved the honor wasn't wearing a black cord that day in front of everyone. I, sitting far in back, was wearing one, still convinced it should have been Mike instead of me or at least with me. I honestly think that Mike would have been chosen, but that one of the teachers blackballed him, because he thought Mike was gay. It was very much the era of don't ask, don't tell, don't even discuss it, so I don't know if Mike was indeed gay. But as the years past I realized that was a definite reason why a bright guy like Mike could have been passed over unfairly.
Mike's speech at graduation was anything but typical. It was a bit shocking, not glowing and optimistic, but indeed cautionary, a tad dark, even foreboding. A very good speech for what we would live through in the next few years. 65% of the class had already signed up for college. About 10% guys of the guys were enlisting in the military right out of school. Two of the guys, friends of mine, sitting somewhere in the mass of people in front of me at the graduation, died in Vietnam. Many of us who went to college were there when the Vietnam protests were at their height, when feminism took off, and when students generally took a very critical look at the smug assumptions we'd had about our government and ourselves.
It was odd sometimes at the university. I actually met some of the people who graduated with me from high school while in college. Gary from above? His last high school girlfriend and I ran into each other and having never come close to talking with each other in high school had several longish conversations our first year at the university. At least there was no question of us not knowing who the other was. Gary transferred to my university as a junior and we had a class together that same year. There was a girl in the same class who was behind us by a year at our high school. She obviously knew Gary from before, and though I didn't know her at all, she clearly knew who I was. I happened to glance at her once or twice when she had an odd hero worshiping expression as she looked back and forth between Gary and I. *Not* something I was used to. Gary was tall, dark and handsome. I was on the short side and ordinary... The next year I was in a small, two-semester class, maybe eight or ten of us. A month or so in one of the guys happened to ask me where I went to high school (If you were from the St. Louis area, it was almost a mandatory question for pigeonholing people you were getting to know!) I told him, and he immediately looked surprised and then said, "So you know, Betsy! You went to the same high school!" Being clueless, I looked at her, thought for a second and said, no, he must be mistaken. I didn't know her before that class. He was sure she said she went to the same high school. I went home and looked at my yearbook and shock of shocks there she was. We were even in same group picture once or twice. Now granted Betsy was very quiet and neither of us was much of a joiner, but I should have remembered her name! Yes, I met her for the first time in class four years after we went to the same high school, and both had honor society cords over our graduation robes! Odder still we had been majoring in the same subject for three years in college before we'd had a class together. Yes, I did try to be a lot more friendly with Betsy once I realized we might easily have known each other long before under slightly different conditions.
So today is the anniversary of when I graduated from college. It rained that day so it couldn't be out in the stadium as planned. The graduates all went to the field house and the parents and guests had to disperse to classrooms around campus to watch on closed circuit TV. Our commencement speaker was Walter Cronkite, if you are American and that name doesn't ring a bell you are still young no matter what you think. He gave a rousing speech in the middle of those troubled times, telling us basically to be critical, but not go to extremes, a speech that could easily resonate today as well.
We didn't cross the stage at our university's graduation so the seating was generally by our colleges within the university and in no particular order within each group. By chance I ran into a guy I knew well from high school, but hadn't seen since. We sat together during the ceremony, and rose with the group to have our degrees conferred upon us. He was kind of an odd guy. Not bad in anyway, but always on the edge of being in trouble. When we were in Advanced Chemistry together he got banned from the lab for accidentally destroying the school's Geiger counter, because he'd ignored the precautions he'd been given. Within ten years of our college graduation he was killed in a car crash.
I skipped my graduate school graduation. Ohio State was on the quarter system back then, so it had a lot of graduations every year. The speakers ranged from the President of the United States (who I did get to go see) to the utterly mundane. The speaker for my graduation day was a famous cartoonist who came every year to my undergraduate university to pick a queen for one of those dances that nobody but frat guys and sorority girls ever went to. I don't think I missed anything.
Not too surprisingly the anniversaries of all my graduations fall within the next week. Umpty years ago today I graduated from college. Four years earlier than that, from tomorrow, I graduated from high school. Four years after college I got my graduate degree, the calendar date a few days from now.
There were 600+ graduates on my high school class, not huge by the standards of bigger cities, but if I remember correctly the second largest high school class in the St. Louis area that year. I had to look in the yearbook to remind myself what color robes we wore. My brother and sister who'd graduated from the same high school had worn traditional black. Times had changed and my class wore gold robes. Our tassels were the school colors, conveniently black and gold.
The first picture of graduation in the yearbook showed the two lines marching into the stadium to be seated. Side by side at the front were Nancy and Gary, both tall and good looking. Nancy was an old friend. We'd been in the same first grade class. The school district had grown so fast that there were 8 times as many graduates in my year as there had been of first graders in my year. Nancy lived not far from me. We were in the safety patrol together on the same school bus route. I didn't see much of Nancy once we started to junior high and didn't ride the same bus to school any more. Gary was a much more recent friend. We shared some interests, belonged to some of the same high school clubs. Gary didn't know it then, but he and I had dated the same girl at different times. Gary had something extra on his robes, a heavy black cord that went behind his neck and tassel ends that dangled down the front. He was in the Nation Honor Society.
I remember that the invited speaker was some businessman, who might as well have been chosen at random for all I knew of him. The three students who spoke were Ray, Janet and Mike. Ray was the class president, he didn't wear a black cord. I really never had any personal dealing with Ray, our class was that big. I guess Ray was a decent enough guy; never heard anything bad about him; but I'm positive he got a lot more votes for class president from the bottom half of the class than he did from the top half. He didn't give a speech, just alternated with the principal as master of ceremonies. We didn't have a class valedictorian. We were all invited to volunteer and submit speeches. I sure didn't volunteer! Janet and Mike were the two chosen. Janet did wear the cord of honor. I didn't know her very well. We were never in the same class together. In fact at a distance I'd always had the opinion she was rather stuffy and full of herself. The one time we did talk face to face, I was surprised to discover she was just a nice person I hadn't been fair with in my own mind. High school kids! ... What are you going to do? ... Janet gave a pretty typical graduation speech, looking to the future and blah, blah. Don't get wrong me, a good speech, but who remembers that stuff?
Mike and I knew each other better. He and I were sitting in the same classroom about a month and a half-earlier waiting for our second period class to begin. I was sitting there since the start of the day, since my first class, Journalism, was in the same room. We knew they were tapping people for the Nation Honor Society that morning. My Journalism teacher was still sitting there with a camera in her lap as the second period was about to start. She said aloud to no one in particular, "I'm just waiting to know where to go." I don't know if she was fooling anyone. I certainly knew she was already where she wanted to be. Three kids from the honor society showed up at the door. So we knew three people in class were going to be tapped. I put two and two together. Mike was also a student of the journalism teacher and was working on the school yearbook that year. That term I was working on the school newspaper, in fact I was designated the front page editor for the next issue. It made sense, Mike was really bright, principal liked him a lot. Mike would be on the front page of the newspaper. All the names of the senior class inductees were being read. The first two names from our classroom were heard and duly honored with a symbol of the school a gold, pinned-on, construction-paper torch with the letters NHS. The names continued to be read and suddenly Mike turned to me and said, "It's going to be you." I said with absolute certainty, "No, it's going to be you!" We went back and forth a couple times and then a last name past his in alphabetical order came over the intercom. I half-way gasped, "It's me." And the picture both appeared on the front page and in the yearbook.
So Mike who deserved the honor wasn't wearing a black cord that day in front of everyone. I, sitting far in back, was wearing one, still convinced it should have been Mike instead of me or at least with me. I honestly think that Mike would have been chosen, but that one of the teachers blackballed him, because he thought Mike was gay. It was very much the era of don't ask, don't tell, don't even discuss it, so I don't know if Mike was indeed gay. But as the years past I realized that was a definite reason why a bright guy like Mike could have been passed over unfairly.
Mike's speech at graduation was anything but typical. It was a bit shocking, not glowing and optimistic, but indeed cautionary, a tad dark, even foreboding. A very good speech for what we would live through in the next few years. 65% of the class had already signed up for college. About 10% guys of the guys were enlisting in the military right out of school. Two of the guys, friends of mine, sitting somewhere in the mass of people in front of me at the graduation, died in Vietnam. Many of us who went to college were there when the Vietnam protests were at their height, when feminism took off, and when students generally took a very critical look at the smug assumptions we'd had about our government and ourselves.
It was odd sometimes at the university. I actually met some of the people who graduated with me from high school while in college. Gary from above? His last high school girlfriend and I ran into each other and having never come close to talking with each other in high school had several longish conversations our first year at the university. At least there was no question of us not knowing who the other was. Gary transferred to my university as a junior and we had a class together that same year. There was a girl in the same class who was behind us by a year at our high school. She obviously knew Gary from before, and though I didn't know her at all, she clearly knew who I was. I happened to glance at her once or twice when she had an odd hero worshiping expression as she looked back and forth between Gary and I. *Not* something I was used to. Gary was tall, dark and handsome. I was on the short side and ordinary... The next year I was in a small, two-semester class, maybe eight or ten of us. A month or so in one of the guys happened to ask me where I went to high school (If you were from the St. Louis area, it was almost a mandatory question for pigeonholing people you were getting to know!) I told him, and he immediately looked surprised and then said, "So you know, Betsy! You went to the same high school!" Being clueless, I looked at her, thought for a second and said, no, he must be mistaken. I didn't know her before that class. He was sure she said she went to the same high school. I went home and looked at my yearbook and shock of shocks there she was. We were even in same group picture once or twice. Now granted Betsy was very quiet and neither of us was much of a joiner, but I should have remembered her name! Yes, I met her for the first time in class four years after we went to the same high school, and both had honor society cords over our graduation robes! Odder still we had been majoring in the same subject for three years in college before we'd had a class together. Yes, I did try to be a lot more friendly with Betsy once I realized we might easily have known each other long before under slightly different conditions.
So today is the anniversary of when I graduated from college. It rained that day so it couldn't be out in the stadium as planned. The graduates all went to the field house and the parents and guests had to disperse to classrooms around campus to watch on closed circuit TV. Our commencement speaker was Walter Cronkite, if you are American and that name doesn't ring a bell you are still young no matter what you think. He gave a rousing speech in the middle of those troubled times, telling us basically to be critical, but not go to extremes, a speech that could easily resonate today as well.
We didn't cross the stage at our university's graduation so the seating was generally by our colleges within the university and in no particular order within each group. By chance I ran into a guy I knew well from high school, but hadn't seen since. We sat together during the ceremony, and rose with the group to have our degrees conferred upon us. He was kind of an odd guy. Not bad in anyway, but always on the edge of being in trouble. When we were in Advanced Chemistry together he got banned from the lab for accidentally destroying the school's Geiger counter, because he'd ignored the precautions he'd been given. Within ten years of our college graduation he was killed in a car crash.
I skipped my graduate school graduation. Ohio State was on the quarter system back then, so it had a lot of graduations every year. The speakers ranged from the President of the United States (who I did get to go see) to the utterly mundane. The speaker for my graduation day was a famous cartoonist who came every year to my undergraduate university to pick a queen for one of those dances that nobody but frat guys and sorority girls ever went to. I don't think I missed anything.